Eleanor And Harry: The Correspondence of Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry S.: The Correspondence of Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman

Steve Neal has collected, in Eleanor and Harry, the correspondence between Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. The 254 letters were written between April 16, 1945 (four days after FDR's death), and mid-December, 1960 (23 months before Eleanor Roosevelt's death). While many of the letters are brief and quotidian, a good number of them concern large issues, both global and national, among them the restoration of post-war Europe; the Korean War; the role and effectiveness of the nascent United Nations (Roosevelt served the Truman administration as a member of the U.S. delegation to the General Assembly); the fraught, mercurial jostling of the cold war; and Democratic Party appointments. Though the two hardly saw eye-to-eye on all issues, their letters were unfailingly respectful. Neal provides a context for many of these letters, which he arranges chronologically. As well, he has written a brief introduction and epilogue, and a helpful, if basic, bibliography. --H. O'Billovich